To get to Roca Ahumada in Oaxaca, Mexico, you take a dirt road off the highway that runs along the Pacific. A few turns later, past the small community of El Venado, a home finally appears: a series of low-slung concrete geometries—sharp angles, blunt walls, and curved segments—scattered with equal measures of rigor and whimsy along an invisible axis hurtling toward the ocean. The assortment of slate-hued brute forms contrasts with parota-wood-louvered sliding doors and the area’s tropical backdrop of tall coconut trees, evergreen shrubs, and lilac-colored trumpet vines.

In 2020, three friends involved in Mexico City’s film, art, and fashion worlds commissioned architect Ludwig Godefroy, who is also based in the capital, to create a vacation home that could be rented out when they weren’t using it and that bore little resemblance to what one typically finds in Puerto Vallarta, Tulum, or any other Mexican beach town. “We didn’t want a palapa,” says one of the owners, Juan Carlos Martín. He first visited the area in 2009 while filming a documentary about Gabriel Orozco. (The famous artist has long had a house nearby.) A decade later, the filmmaker joined forces with two friends to buy about an acre on the same paradisial stretch of shore a little under an hour west of Puerto Escondido.

Juan Carlos and his friends had another wish—that the house be fortified against the elements (salt air, hurricanes, high humidity, harsh heat) while engaging the landscape with a variety of open and sheltered spaces flowing freely in and out of each other. Citing influences from antiquity and haciendas to Louis Kahn and Agustín Hernández, Godefroy, who’s French born, has made a name for himself with photogenic, concrete-heavy projects that tackle Mexico’s coastal climates with atemporal shapes—squares, triangles, and circles—tilted and toppled into inventive configurations.

“We wanted the main experience of the house to be inside, the way Luis Barragán’s houses are closed off on the exterior but unfold richly within,” says Juan Carlos. Godefroy complied with a rambling, seven-thousand-square-foot plan that makes the most of the site’s significant depth and signals a weather-defiant permanence with its protective, long, and robust walls. Coyly embedded into the sloping land behind a dune, the expansive construction’s sharp volumes are invisible from the nearby beach. Within its perimeter, however, the property’s scheme is anything but timid. Instead, the design envelops the senses with the idea of the recorrido, a playfully orchestrated sequence of spaces that enhances the lived experience of many Mexican homes, including Barragán’s. Countering the conventional thinking that a beach house’s spaces should all look out to the sea, Roca Ahumada’s unusual layout stretches indoor and outdoor “rooms” inland, creating distinct areas separated by gardens: Only the large pool has a view of the ocean, while resting quarters embrace the country-facing end.

Occupying the back half of the plot, abutting access roads and surrounded by palmares (palm groves), three “villas” are connected by a long, raised walkway. Each villa has its own outdoor area with a personal soaking pool, making them feel larger than their actual footprint. “You could, in theory, be naked in your little garden and not worry about anyone seeing you,” says Danaé Salazar, Juan Carlos’s partner, referring to the intimacy provided by the curving walls and wooden screens that enclose each villa’s domain. The elaborate veiling isn’t accidental: Godefroy says his homes represent an arquitectura del pudor—an architecture of modesty—characterized by guarding private moments from uninvited eyes. “I like to hide things a little, to keep the secret inside, which heightens its enjoyment.” A fourth, elevated room near the middle of the plan, more spartan than the villas and accessed via stairs, was added late in the design phase when the owners brought in another partner.

“My architecture is designed to age. I use sturdy materials that will acquire a patina, until one day the structure becomes one with the landscape.”
—Ludwig Godefroy, architect

“In my houses, you never know if you’re inside or outside,” adds Godefroy. His maxim is confirmed in his design for Juan Carlos, Danaé, and their friends, where unbuilt interstitial buffer zones invite introspection while apertures punctured into the thick walls create a visual connection to the natural setting. As the voluptuous architecture inside of the compound matches the magic of the surrounding site, glimpses of the sky and Oaxaca’s landscape are never not present, even from a stunning, ostensibly “indoor” common living area. This central gathering point—which includes a kitchen, a long dining table, and a sunken, circular seating cove—is particularly alluring after dusk, when the room’s textured corners glow under spotlights. Anchoring a home that already feels submerged in the terrain, the round conversation pit at the center of the space is Roca Ahumada’s navel, the cozy spot where the group and guests end many nights over drinks.

The living room would be the home’s most spectacular feature if it weren’t for the striking main swimming pool: Majestically serene, filled to be flush with the property’s ample front terrace, and offering a nearly 360-degree panorama of sky, ocean, and surrounding palms, it is about as perfect as it gets. Meanwhile, a small roof covering part of the pool—accessed via stairs hidden behind the seating—is the perfect spot to take in the region’s celebrated sunsets, the culmination of Roca Ahumada’s deeply pleasurable recorrido.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Ludwig Godefroy Architect / @ludwiggodefroy

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